“And when I am your wife, I suppose you will cut me off from tobacco altogether.”
“I should never be a domestic tyrant, Juliet; but it would wound me to see my wife smoke, just as much as it wounds me now when I see you smoke half a dozen cigarettes in succession.”
“What a Philistine you are, Harry! Well, you shall not be tortured. I’ll ease off the smoking if I can—but a whiff or two of an Egyptian soothes me when my nerves are overstrained. You are as bad as my mother, who thinks cigarette smoking one stage on the road to perdition, and rather an advanced stage, too. You are very easily shocked, Harry, if an innocent little cigarette can shock you. I wonder if you are really fond of me, now the novelty of our engagement has worn off?”
“I am fonder of you every day I live.”
“Enthusiastic boy! If that is true, you may be able to stand a worse shocker than my poor little cigarette.”
Harrington turned pale, but he took the hand which she held out to him, and grasped it firmly. What was she going to tell him?
“Harry, I want to make a financial statement. I want you to help me, if you can. I am up to my eyes in debt.”
“In debt?”
“Yes. It sounds bad, don’t it? Debt and tobacco should be exclusively masculine vices. I owe money all round—-not large sums—but the sum-total is large. I have had to hold my own in smart houses upon an allowance which some women would spend with their shoemaker. My mother gives me a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year for everything, tips, travelling expenses, clothes, music—and I am not going to say anything unkind about her on that score, for I don’t see how she could give me more. Her own means come to something under eighteen hundred a year, and she has this place to keep up. Henry takes all the rents, and often keeps her waiting for her income, which is a first charge upon the estate. If it were not for your father, who looks after her interests as sharply as he can, she might fare much worse. Henry brings as many men as he likes here, and contributes nothing to the housekeeping.”
“And you owe money to milliners and people?” said Harrington, deeply distressed by his sweetheart’s humiliation, which he felt more keenly than the lady herself.